Archegos Capital Management

A New York family office managing only Bill Hwang's own money, formed in 2013 from the remains of his hedge fund Tiger Asia.

A vehicle that built more than $100B of concentrated stock exposure through total-return swaps with ten banks so that none could see the whole, and — a jury found — propped up the prices.

After Tiger Asia settled insider-trading charges in 2012 and returned outside money, Bill Hwang turned it into Archegos, a family office with about $200 million. By early 2021 he had built it to roughly $36 billion of equity and over $100 billion of exposure through swaps with about ten banks, each seeing only its own slice, concentrated in stocks such as ViacomCBS, Discovery and Baidu. When ViacomCBS fell after a share offering on 26 March 2021 the banks liquidated at once, losing about $10 billion. Hwang was charged in April 2022, convicted on 10 of 11 counts in July 2024 and sentenced to 18 years.

No penalty against the fund itself: it was insolvent. The banks ate the loss: Credit Suisse ~$5.5B, Nomura ~$2.9B, Morgan Stanley ~$0.9B, UBS ~$0.8B. Credit Suisse was fined $387M by the Fed and UK PRA (July 2023) for its Archegos risk failures. Hwang was convicted in July 2024 and sentenced to 18 years; CFO Patrick Halligan was convicted with him.